SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California’s state fire department is stretched thin just as the bone-dry state enters the peak of its wildfire season, with vacancy rates exceeding 15 percent for some firefighters and supervisors. The vacancy rate is more than 10 percent for some fire engine drivers, according to statistics provided to The Associated Press.
A five-year drought and changing weather patterns have transformed what once was a largely summertime job into an intense year-round firefight, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokeswoman Janet Upton.
“It’s not the old days where we were a seasonal department with a season that lasted a few months,” she said. “It’s an increasingly challenging job, no thanks to Mother Nature and climate change.”
The shortage means that state firefighting department is forced during weather conditions fanning large blazes to keep firefighters on duty for long hours as they do backbreaking, dangerous work trying to put out massive wildfires that have become bigger and more frequent in recent years.
Nearly 25 percent of departing employees over the last two years have told officials they quit for better-paying jobs with other firefighting agencies, according to the statistics provided to the AP by CalFire.
The union that represents the state firefighters who fight fires outside urban and suburban areas blamed low pay as more than 100 members, families and representatives of other unions protested in Sacramento on Monday.
Union and department officials said California has enough state firefighters to keep the public safe – at the expense of firefighting men and women who frequently work for weeks without days off without seeing their families.
“We’re short-staffed, we’re stretched thin, we’re in these epidemic fire conditions,” said Patrick Walker, 40, a CalFire captain in San Diego County.
He worked 47 straight days fighting one large fire last year and said he worked three weeks with no break this year, most of it fighting a Monterey County fire that has burned more than 134 square miles.
“With the pay inequities, the shifts we work and the turnover, we’re running less and less people,” Walker said. “There may be a concern where the public is at risk due to the long hours.”
Union members are seeking a mid-contract pay raise that would give compensation above the $60,000 a typical firefighter is paid each year in salary and overtime. Fire captains typically make more than $85,000 and the salaries of battalion chiefs exceed $98,000.
A 2014 study by the state’s human resources department found state firefighters receive one-third less in pay and benefits, on average, than their counterparts at fire departments for 18 California cities and two counties surveyed.
